Intercambios Puerto Rico

About

Intercambios Puerto Rico is a nonprofit community-based organization that promotes the social integration of marginalized groups, including drug users, homeless, and sex workers. We work from a scientific perspective of harm reduction through service provision, education, advocacy, and research. We envision a Puerto Rico where marginalized populations have access to all opportunities for individual and collective development that makes it possible for them to attain a decent life and contribute to society.

Our syringe exchange program (SEP) provide services to over 630 injecting drug users annually in 15 communities across the eastern section of the island. Descriminalización.org, our drug policy change campaign, seeks alternatives to the criminalization of drugs in Puerto Rico. Understanding that the “war on drugs” has failed and that it affects our communities, we seek to stimulate dialogue, critical analysis, and activism on the issues related to drug use, abuse and dependence.

375 civil society groups, including prominent human rights NGOs, from across the globe have called on UN drug control authorities to urge an immediate stop to the extrajudicial killings of suspected drug offenders in the Philippines.

Civil society groups from all over the world have released a statement condemning governments for failing to acknowledge the devastating consequences of punitive and repressive drug policies as they prepare for a UN summit on the issue next month.

Lawmakers in Puerto Rico are set to debate over two separate bills on cannabis policy, one which would decriminalise possession of small amounts of the drug and another which would authorise its use for medicinal purposes.